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If you're on the move or struggling to gain control of the TV remote in your living room, the BBC's iPlayer apps are an easy way to watch its live programming. The problem, until now, has been that the mobile apps would only let you stream the England-specific versions of BBC One and BBC Two. So if you lived in Edinburgh and wanted to watch Reporting Scotland, you were out of luck until it was made available to stream on-demand. It wasn't the most accommodating setup, so the BBC is updating both its iOS and Android apps to support the regional versions of BBC One and BBC Two broadcast in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Just choose your preferred location in the app's settings and you'll receive exactly the same programming as you would normally on the telly.

The licence fee that funds most of the BBC's programming has long been a contentious issue in the UK. For some, it's a safeguard for the broadcaster's most valuable work, while for others it's an increasingly outdated and unfair tax, penalising those who only want to watch other channels. Today the UK's Culture, Media and Sport Committee weighed into the debate, declaring that it doesn't see "a long-term future" for the licence fee in its current form. It admitted there were few viable alternatives for the fee in the near-term, but emphasised the current model was becoming "harder and harder to sustain."

It's been eight months since we first become aware that Freeview is looking to take on YouView with a new on-demand service, but since then we haven't heard much about it. Thankfully, the company has decided now is the right time to share a little more information, which includes what the connected service will be called. Freeview Play will offer consumers the choice of live television and on-demand TV when it launches later this year. Like Freeview, Play will be subscription free and will be integrated in connected TVs and set-top boxes, although we don't yet know what it will look like. We do know, however, that with support from Freeview shareholders Arqiva, BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Sky, you can expect iPlayer, ITV Player and the new All 4 brand to be available on the service when it launches, finally letting you catch up on all the stuff you missed.

The future of football broadcasts in the UK might be up in the air at the moment, but one important piece of TV rights has already been secured. The BBC announced today it has extended its deal to deliver Premier League highlights until the end of the 2018/19 season. That means you'll continue to see Match Of The Day on a Saturday night (and other select matchdays), Football Focus and a new midweek magazine show that's due to air on BBC Two late on a Wednesday. Oh, and don't forget replays on BBC iPlayer. If you're fan of Lineker and co. or prefer your football highlights without ad breaks, you can rest easy -- you've got another four seasons until that possibility arises again.

The BBC is getting a little experimental. Or rather, it wants to show people more of the crazy, forward-thinking ideas that it normally cooks up behind closed doors, and which often never see the light of day. To solve this, the broadcaster is launching a new platform called Taster, where it'll be releasing a steady stream of shows and features that challenge its traditional output. Anyone can access the site online and the BBC is keen for people to get hands-on, whether that means signing up for a new version of iPlayer, or watching some of its creative show formats. You'll then be able to submit feedback, and the BBC will use it to decide which ideas are worth developing for primetime public consumption.

The BBC is one of the most popular news organisations on the planet, yet its BBC News app hasn't seen a redesign since 2010. Realising that a little bit of spring cleaning is in order, the broadcaster has begun rolling out a major update that introduces a fresh new look and deeper customisation options. Readers can now access local news reports for the first time, complimenting the BBC's national coverage, and also choose to follow specific topics that they're interested in. The latter are collected in a section of the app called My News, where users will also be suggested new topics based on what they've been reading recently. While none of these features are particularly new, it shows that the BBC is at least paying close attention to the demand for news curation apps like Flipboard and Circa.

Want to know why many people don't like it when governments call for an end to encrypted communication? Here's why. A new round of Edward Snowden leaks at The Guardian has revealed that the intelligence agents at Britain's GCHQ collected email from major news outlets (including the BBC, Le Monde, the New York Times and the Washington Post) in 2008 while testing a system that stripped out data irrelevant to searches. While it's not clear that the agency singled out the press during the test, there's no indication that it got rid of the messages, either.

Provided you're somewhere with a stable internet connection, it's now perfectly possible to replace your old-fashioned radio set with a tablet. Most stations have a dedicated app these days and it's easy enough to connect a pair of headphones or a cheap wireless speaker to enhance your listening. The BBC embraced this trend a couple of years back by siphoning iPlayer radio into a separate app, but now it's going one step further with dedicated apps for iPad, Kindle Fire and Android tablets. As you might expect, all three have been designed with larger screens in mind, which should make it easier to jump between stations, find archived shows and see when your favourite DJ is up next. The new tablet apps come with a "work-in-progress" label though, so the odd technical hiccup is likely. In the future, the BBC says it'll be adding features such as Favourites and Playlister too, the latter of which helps you transfer your new musical discoveries to services like Spotify.

One of iPlayer's great features is the ability to download all of its programmes for offline viewing. The Beeb traditionally let you download and keep shows for up to seven days, allowing you to catch up on the commute to work, but as part of its iPlayer revamp, that period was extended to 30 days. After rolling out the feature on the Xbox One and Android devices last week, iPhone and iPad users can now join in the fun. Not only will you be able to download all the programmes you've missed today and carry them over until the New Year, the new update will also let you specify your location to access regional on-demand programmes via the TV Guide. Great if you're visiting friends and family over Christmas and need some entertainment during the post-dinner lull.

It's safe to say that EE's first foray into the living room, EE TV, has a few teething problems. Perhaps the most prominent is its small selection of on-demand services, which pales in comparison to other, more mature set-top boxes. The network operator has sought to tackle the issue with its first major platform update today, which adds apps for Deezer, Dailymotion, Euronews, Hopster and Cloudio TV. While any new services are an improvement, none of them are the sort of heavyweight providers we'd like to see landing on the device. Services like Netflix would be great, but ITV Player and 4oD would be a good start, too.

Even before it was announced BBC Three was being taken off the air and turned into an online-only property to cut costs, the BBC was using the channel to experiment with digital-first strategies, such as putting shows online prior to broadcasting them the traditional way. Other streaming-focused initiatives have followed, but the BBC has kept hush about the real future of BBC Three when it's yanked from the airwaves towards the end of next year. Today, however, the broadcaster has revealed the first details of its plan to move BBC Three online, and rather than simply turning it into a streaming-only affair, it wants to reinvent the channel as "a new online service" that "could be a pathfinder for the digital age and for the future of the BBC."

If you haven't heard the This American Life podcast Serial, then you've probably heard people endlessly banging on about how great it is. Despite its massive popularity in the US, the first country to syndicate the real-life murder mystery show will actually be in the UK. The BBC will broadcast the first season of the series on digital radio station Radio 4 Extra, one per day, in the run up to the finale. The first show airs on Sunday December 7th at 9:00pm, presumably with the conclusion airing on December 18th. One thing to note, of course, is that given the BBC's strict policy against advertising, it's likely that the Mail... Kimp? gag that opens each installment won't survive the trip across the Atlantic.

At long last, the BBC has released an iPlayer app for the Xbox One. It's been over a year since the console debuted in the UK, and finally it's able to make good on its promise of becoming the all-in-one media hub. It makes use of the BBC's new unified iPlayer design, although the broadcaster says the app has been upscaled for 1080p displays and refined to support the new Kinect's voice commands. To coincide with its release, the BBC has also begun extending iPlayer's new 30-day catch-up period. The feature is already available in the iPlayer apps for Xbox One and Android, and is likely to roll out to other devices over the next week. If you own an Xbox 360, however, the BBC says it'll be adding 30 day catch-up and Radio 1 content in a new update coming early next year.

While the BBC Sport iOS and Android apps have been available for over a year and a half, Windows Phone users have needed to the Beeb's mobile website instead. The fact that Microsoft's mobile OS has struggled to gain market share is likely to blame, but the BBC saw over 800,000 Windows Phone users come to its website last month, so it's decided to extend the love to Lumia owners too. Just like on more popular smartphones, the new Windows Phone app is native but it uses a webview to deliver BBC Sport content. It means that users will get all of the information listed on the desktop website, but also enjoy Windows Phone-specific features like live tiles, native sharing and a native menu. Unfortunately, push updates aren't available at launch, but the BBC says it'll monitor app usage and user feedback to decide whether to add features like goal alerts in the future.

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We all remember the launch. Even Blizzard admits it wasn't the smoothest, to the point where we were offered five days off our subs and an apology from J. Allen Brack. That's not something Blizzard does very often anymore, and it signifies that yes, this was a pretty big deal in terms of launch screwups. Ironically, for some of us (like myself) it was a pretty smooth launch overall. But for some of us it was so bad that they complained to the BBC, as the above clip showcases.

Incgamers has a long article about the show Watchdogs on the BBC that goes into detail about the piece and its conclusions for the Warlords launch. I feel forced to agree that Watchdogs doesn't seem to have tried very hard here - their example of someone not being able to play WoW is someone on an ancient computer running around Ashran, and he's level 100, so... he played sometime. It's definitely an interesting time to be a World of Warcraft player, as the ten year old MMO seems to regaining cultural relevance with a vengeance lately. I don't think anybody's surprised that the launch troubles have been a highly discussed issue, but this seems like a new extreme to me.

The BBC holds a privileged position in the UK broadcasting market. As the beneficiary of your TV license fees, the Beeb picked up £3.7 billion last year from Brits, helping it fund its TV, radio, and web services. Some -- notably its competitors -- argue this is unfair, and perhaps because of this, the broadcaster is going on the offensive (or, perhaps, defensive) by reiterating exactly what it offers for that money.

In a bid to serve the differing radio tastes of the nation, the BBC's line-up of numerical stations have provided live broadcasts and catch-up content for a number of years. Radio 1, which primarily serves around 40 percent of Brits between the age of 15 and 24, has experimented on YouTube and various social networks to engage more with its listeners, but the lure of iPlayer appears to have proved too strong. Today, the radio station has got a new dedicated presence on the Beeb's streaming service, offering access to an array of live and on-demand video from Radio 1's live events. It launches with plenty of content, including Live Lounges with Taylor Swift, Teen Awards coverage and a brand new chart show, putting more "Watch" in the station's Listen, Watch, Share tagline.

It's been almost six months since the BBC updated its iOS and Android Sport apps to deliver real-time football notifications, giving fans the ability to receive goal updates while on the move. However, football isn't the only sport the Beeb allocates a huge amount of resources to: it also shares live Formula 1 coverage with Sky. In an new update today, the BBC Sport team is giving F1 fans some mobile love by extending push notifications to cover practice, qualifying and results for the remaining F1 races of the 2014 season. Out for the day for the final double-point race in Abu Dhabi at the end of the month? The BBC now has you covered.

The BBC's extensively redesigned iPlayer has been gradually lumbering its way onto different compatible devices since it was first launched earlier this year. YouView's hybrid Freeview/IPTV set-top boxes have, until now, been sorely neglected, which is somewhat strange given the BBC is one of YouView's principal investors. Well, better late than never, the new iPlayer has finally started rolling out to YouView set-top boxes, alongside the addition of the BBC's Connected Red Button features. If you're in possession of a YouView- or BT-issued box made by Humax (Huawei's also built a few), then these goodies will show up shortly, if not today. TalkTalk customers, however, are still playing the waiting game, though they can expect to receive the updates "in due course."

In the early days of HDTV, BBC's nature docs were the go-to showpieces for your new home theater gear. Some time has passed since then, and Planet Earth on Blu-ray doesn't look quite as good as it used to. With Life Story, however, the outfit's jumped into the world of UHD 4K filming for the first time. How's it look? Terrifying. Not for the reason you might expect, though. The teaser clip is of the death-defying journey that Greenland's barnacle geese chicks take to leave their nests. Because they can't fly, the adorable goslings have to glide some 400 feet down a sheer cliffside, to their parents and the feeding ground below. And by glide, we mean enter a controlled fall for a bit and then miraculously survive after tumbling along the rock wall. If the streaming clip over at the source isn't enough for you, the full episode debuts on BBC One at 9 p.m. this Thursday and we've embedded the series' trailer just below.

For over 85 years, the BBC published a weekly television and radio programme listings magazine called The Radio Times. The rise of the internet and smartphone use means it's nowhere near as popular as it once was, but the Beeb is ensuring it will continue to live on, by digitising 4,469 past editions and making them available to browse online. BBC Genome allows users to plug in a programme date or Radio Times edition from between 1923 and 2009, which reveals a Wiki-like rundown of the BBC's TV and radio schedules on a particular day. The first ever broadcast of Blue Peter is there, as is the BBC's coverage of the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. It lists the presenters, contributors and even how much a related BBC video or DVD would have cost back in the day. If you're interested to see how the BBC's scheduling has changed over time or what "the official organ of the B.B.C" listed on the day you were born, hit the source link below.

While Songkick's live event listings are already featured in some of the most popular music services on the planet, none are as illustrious as the BBC. To help the Beeb with the giant task of cataloging and listing every artist that appears on one of its TV or radio programmes, Songkick has been brought in to do what it does best: supply BBC Music's new performer pages with every upcoming concert across the UK. The good news is that the startup doesn't just catalog A-list events, meaning you'll be able to follow upcoming artists as they perform their first gigs. To access the BBC's new Songkick-powered concert listings, head on over to the new BBC Music and simply select the artist you want to see (or just download the official Songkick app).

Back in April, BBC Director General Tony Hall announced that as part of an iPlayer revamp, the default programme catch-up period would be extended from seven days to 30. It's taken just over six months, but the BBC has now agreed the necessary terms with rights-holders and widened its playback window for TV and radio programmes. The extension complements its recent redesign and cross-device resumable playback features, but not all content will adhere to the BBC's new availability rules: current affairs programmes like Match of the Day, Crimewatch and news reports will still be exempt, meaning you'll have to get catch up on those long shots and mugshots before that weekly playback period expires.

This week marks a new chapter in how computing is taught in Britain's schools, with children as young as five learning how to code as part of the government's new national curriculum. With the help of hardware like the Raspberry Pi, schools are expected to help pupils understand and exercise the basic principles of computer science, giving them a basic grounding in programming and how algorithms are implemented in the devices they use every day. It's a tough task, but the BBC wants to help, so it's expanded the support materials on its Bitesize website (having already helped schoolchildren learn more about core subjects for more than 15 years) to include basic computing skills. Content will include a number of interactive games and online guides, but the BBC also intends to deliver a number of new technology-themed TV shows, 30 years after it launched its first computing initiative centred around the BBC Microcomputer. With smartphones and tablets at their disposal, younger generations are now surrounded by technology -- the government now (finally) believes it's time for them to get a better grasp of how it all works.